


Let Us Go Then, You And I

by sageness



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canon - TV, Cover Art, F/M, Foursome, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Team, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-04
Updated: 2007-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:20:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/sageness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Love Song of Lt. Colonel John Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Us Go Then, You And I

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was started in early season 2. S3 has jossed Sheppard's characterization a bit, so feel free to consider this a slightly alternate reality. Title and certain images are from Eliot. Many thanks to Purna and Malnpudl for their brilliant and exceedingly generous betas. Thanks also to TheComingNight for cheerleading.

  


 

 

John wandered through the half-deserted corridors of Atlantis, following her hum, seeing which doors opened more readily to him than others.

It was a game he played sometimes, on rare calm days like today. Rodney was stuck in an all-day department meeting, Teyla was on the mainland, Ronon was doing close combat drills with the marines, and Lorne had thrown John out of his office with a baleful look and a warning not to think about touching the requisitions he'd spent the last week finalizing, _please, sir_; and no matter how bored John was, he knew better than to piss off his XO. So he allowed the silent voice of the city to fill his head and followed.

She led him up and over and down, and before he knew it, he was surrounded by green growing things—botany's experimental greenhouse—deep in the heart of the science section. The greenhouse was peaceful, dense with foliage and littered with signs that read, 'Don't touch! This will kill you!' in neat bubbly script.

Sitting on a plank spanning one of the raised beds was Katie Brown. She had various gardening tools scattered around her and she looked so at home there, John almost hated to interrupt. But she smiled when he said hi, and no one else was in the botany lab; that made it easy to lean against an equipment cart, make small talk, and pretend not to notice what an amazing rack she had.

Being neither blind nor a complete idiot, she caught him. He stammered, charmingly he hoped, something about what a nice shirt she was wearing. With a twinkle in her eye, she said, "Colonel, I have a PhD in botany and one in palynology, but I'm working on killer plant toxins now." He blinked, and she said, "Also, thank you. I like this shirt, too."

His gaze drifted from the spark in her eyes to the fullness of her lips, and—likewise not being a complete idiot—he thought, _mmmmh_, and also _it's worth a shot_. "It can be hard," he said, stretching a little to show off his arms, "dealing with the stress of being here."

"Mm-hmm," she agreed, tucking a lock of pretty red hair behind her ear.

"Hard to relax," he suggested.

"It can be." Then she looked up from the alien grapevine she was measuring. "Even more so in a position like yours," she said, "with so much danger and risk."

She was cupping a bunch of grapes with one hand, squeezing it gently. He swallowed. "Well, it helps to have someone to unwind with."

"Does it?" she said, and the twinkle was back.

Her eyes were really, strikingly blue. He let his smirk start to show. "Mm-hmm."

"Botany can be very stressful, too." She tapped some figures into her laptop, which lay on the board beside her. "You might be surprised."

John propped a knee on the edge of the bed's retaining wall. "I'm told I give a great backrub."

She let the tape measure snap back into its roll and lifted her eyes. "Would you like to come over for dinner? I do a mean pasta."

 

* * *

John almost asked Rodney if he'd mind about Katie, but then he decided that with two hundred people living together in the middle of nowhere, nearly everybody was somebody's ex. It wasn't worth worrying over. So he didn't.

After dinner, which was truly awesome, the first kiss was garlicky and hesitant, but then—when she pushed him down onto her bed and made it clear exactly what she wanted—the sex was sensational. They didn't have much in common, which was great as far as John was concerned. It was exactly the sort of thing John wanted—simple, friendly, occasionally boisterous and often giggly sex. It was great.

For many, many weeks. Then one Tuesday night, after she came and he came and he had licked her to a second orgasm, she said, "So, Shawn and I are beginning to see more of each other."

"Shawn?" John pressed a kiss to the top of her red curls and sat up.

She reached for his hand and squeezed. "Shawn Wakefield? In geology? We've been dating, John, and it's time to make it exclusive."

He rubbed the back of his head, wondering how he'd missed a little detail like that. "So I guess that's it, then?"

She sat up, using his hand for leverage. "I'm sorry."

She didn't look sorry, but it would've been worse if she had. "It's no problem," he said, because it wasn't, really, the more he thought about it. They weren't serious. As a rule, he didn't do serious—it was part of what she'd liked about him, she'd said, back before things had apparently turned serious with Shawn.

"Look, you shouldn't take this the wrong way. It isn't—well, never mind," she said. "Actually, you should talk to Sophie in xenobiology. You and she would get along so well."

She kissed him once more, and that was that.

 

* * *

He didn't seek out Sophie, and he hadn't planned to. It was just his luck that he was piloting the jumper when her catch of Lantean monster flying sea bass jumped out of their tank, in mid-flight, and flopped all over the jumper's rear cabin. He engaged the autopilot and helped her get them all safely back into the tank, securing one of the equipment nets over the top. They both got soaked.

She was pissed as hell and John knew in a heartbeat what she would look like mid-orgasm. He asked her to dinner as soon as they unloaded.

"You cook?" she asked, with a speculative lift of her eyebrows.

"Uh, kind of?"

"Tell you what," she said. "Forget dinner. Just come by for dessert. Say nine-thirty-ish?"

It was delicious.

 

* * *

Sophie was intense. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark looks when she was annoyed and a different sort of dark look when his fingers or mouth were really working for her. She took, like Katie had, but afterwards she would sit up in bed to read while he sprawled at her side, and she would comb her fingers through his hair until he fell asleep. They didn't talk, and it wasn't _fun_ in any sense John had ever used the word, but it took the edge off.

They had three months of it before she had an accident with one of the alien creatures she was studying. It was something akin to a giant squid, but it had a caustic agent in its ink that went straight through her glove. Beckett saved the hand by a miracle of Ancient technology, but grafts and rehabilitation would take months, so they sent her back to Colorado.

When she left, she said to him, "This really sucks."

"Yeah," he agreed, and then she was gone.

 

* * *

After Sophie, there was a string of scientists. He avoided women who worked in physics and astronomy; poaching wasn't cool, and he spent too much time in Rodney's lab as it was.

Hilde was in microbiology. Anna was a geneticist. Loshanda was a civilian physician's assistant on loan from the _Daedalus_ for three months, who then hooked him up with Dr. Xing after she splinted his latest broken finger. Eventually Beckett issued a polite ultimatum: he could stop getting injured on missions or he could show a little more discretion if he was going to use the infirmary staff as a dating pool, as they all had to work together and John oughtn't to endanger the quality of the city's medical care.

It wasn't like John actively _tried_ to get hurt, but he took Beckett's point and returned his attentions to the narrowing range of non-medical female science staff.

Deva was an astrocartographer, which he thought was far enough from the Physics Department that he could make an exception, especially since she was incredibly hot; but after two dates (and by dates, he meant marathons of unbelievable fucking), she was assigned to a new, six-month-long project as Rodney's right-hand-woman. John took the hint, bit the proverbial bullet, and called it off.

Nicole was an oceanographer. They spent a lot of time in the jumper, supposedly studying wave mechanics, but also discovering new uses for swivel chairs. She adored surfing—her eyes lit up like Christmas when she first saw the miniboard propped against the wall in his quarters. Turned out, she had one, too. She could cook twelve different kinds of fish and taught him three. He let himself spend more time with her than he had the others. He realized, after about three months of it, that he really liked her. He wasn't sure why, but then a few weeks later, he realized that she was the first one who gave as well as she got. And he had fun with her.

He really cared about her.

Fuck.

 

* * *

He'd never used 'because I'm too damned invested in you' as a reason for breaking up with a woman before. It had always been the other way around—either he ditched them because they were too invested, or they cut their losses before they got too steep.

She didn't see it coming at all. She hadn't noticed things were any different. And hell, even he didn't know when it had gone from being friends with benefits to more.

"When did this happen? How did I miss it?" she demanded.

"Surfing," he mumbled.

"We've been surfing for months."

"Surfing, sex on the beach, maybe it was the sand crab races."

"Oh," she said, crestfallen. "Damn it, John, that is so not fair."

"I'm sorry," he said.

They sat in silence for a long time.

"You're sure you can't?" she asked.

"Nicole, I want…damn it, I have dreams about you."

"About 'us', you mean."

"About things I don't get to have."

"You're an idiot, you know that?"

He shrugged. "You study the ocean, I kill Wraith."

"Those things are not mutually exclusive."

He wasn't going to tell her the dream about the white picket fence around the beach house and the three or four noisy, sand-covered kids. "I can't do this."

"We could, if you wanted. Maybe I have dreams, too."

"We can't—"

"We could."

"No."

"That's so—"

"Look, you're just not Air Force wife material!" he yelled, pissed that she was fighting for it—for them.

"Fuck you," she said.

And that wasn't that, not quite. It took a couple of weeks of recrimination and one last fight—a horror show of screaming and tears and tight-jawed sarcasm that echoed across Atlantis within the hour. Then it was over. A month later, Nicole had her transfer back to Earth and everyone John lived and worked with knew what a complete asshole he was.

 

* * *

The next time an alien princess tried to seduce him, he laughed in her face.

The time after that, he just raised an eyebrow and said, "You've really got the wrong guy. See that guy over there holding the scanner? That's the one you want." Rodney stared at him, flabbergasted, but John just winked and mouthed, "Enjoy," from over her shoulder.

The time after that, it was a prince instead of a princess, though he was damned pretty. Luckily it was late and they'd all been assigned private quarters for the night. It wasn't as tough as he would have guessed to say fuck it. He hadn't gotten any since Nicole, over two months back, and coming into someone's mouth again felt so good that he didn't really give a crap if it belonged to a woman or a man. Letting the guy rub off against his hip was a little weird, but sex was sex and touching was…exactly what he'd been going crazy missing for all this time.

In the morning Rodney took one look at him and turned a cold shoulder.

Later, thanks to a mishap with Mylar Powerbar wrappers and a local sect of tree-worshipping not-Druids, he and Rodney were confined to a circle of sacred trees, bound wrist-to-wrist and ankle-to-ankle, until their sentence was complete—or Teyla and Ronon sprang them.

"It's going to be really embarrassing if we don't get free before one of us has to take a piss," John said.

Rodney blushed, but didn't look at him and didn't answer.

"So," John said pleasantly, "want to tell me what you were so angry about this morning?"

Rodney focused on one of the posts their bindings were tied to. "Nothing."

"Bullshit. Spill."

Rodney jutted out his chin, and didn't answer until John started kicking their ankles together. "Will you quit it?" Rodney yelled. "You're being absurd."

"You've been giving me the silent treatment all day. All I did was sit down at breakfast."

"Mm-hmm. With a hickey on your neck and looking like you'd just been fucked into next Thursday."

John frowned. It hadn't been _that_ good. And he'd heard others in the hall when the prince came in for the bedroom diplomacy phase of the evening. "I thought we all got visitors last night."

Rodney tugged at one wrist, fidgeting, which yanked John's arm along with it. "Not all of us are willing to, ah, be intimate with anything on two legs, Colonel."

"Intimate?" John pulled his hand back. "What, did yours want to paint your nails and share your deepest secrets?"

"I take it yours…"

"He blew me, rubbed off, and left. End of story."

Rodney choked and his voice went up half an octave. "He."

Oh, shit. "I guess yours was a woman," he said, and blew out a gust of air. "Why didn't I get a woman?"

"You might have liked her," Rodney said stonily. "She reminded me of Chaya."

"What, hot and creepy?"

"You didn't think Chaya was creepy."

"Not at the time, no. And I learned my lesson, now didn't I?" John tugged their joined wrists toward him again, reexamining the heavy cuffs. They didn't seem to have any pickable locks. "She was hot, though."

"Can we get back to the guy thing?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Hello, U.S. military, Rodney. You know how it is."

"No. No way, first, because mission-related contacts don't count against your stupid regs, and second, because you don't get to do this!"

"What?"

"Where do you get off keeping something like this from me?" Rodney shouted. "You know damned well I'm not going to tell, I just—" Rodney stopped abruptly, and the change in his expression was like closing shutters on a window. Rodney fixed his eyes at a spot over John's shoulder. "Never mind."

"Rodney—"

"No, you're right, it's absolutely none of my business."

Silence loomed. John listened to the forest. He listened to Rodney breathe. He watched Rodney open his mouth and begin a word, only to bite it off unvocalized.

"He…" He'd kissed John's wrist and stared up at him with dark eyes and naked lust. He'd said John could say no any time he wanted and then laid a kiss in John's palm that went straight to his groin. He'd said _Let me taste you,_ and John knew only how good it felt to be touched again. "It's been a while," John said at last.

Rodney snorted. "And the two goblets of ceremonial wine didn't hurt, either."

"Hey, don't make it sound like that."

"Like what, exactly?"

"Like I'm a two-beer-queer!"

"No, of course you're not."

"I'm not! Look, Rodney, all I'm saying is…I mean, he was totally different from Nicole…and he wanted it. I mean, he came to my room and…"

"Uh-_huh_."

"And I'll never have to see him again."

Rodney met his eyes for a split second, then looked back at whatever he found so fascinating in the air behind John's head. "Right," Rodney said.

Rodney didn't say anything else, and it was a while before John realized the cold shoulder was back, just as strong as before.

 

* * *

As a rule, he didn't touch other military. He probably shouldn't have touched Major Cooper, but the _Daedalus_ was about to leave again, the beach party was a blast, and she was hot. Also, as pilot of a starship, she wasn't even close to under his command.

Emma was athletic like Nicole, but intense in a way that reminded him of Sophie. The two nights they had, the sex was like playful wrestling, and he liked it. He liked that she made him work for it. He liked the gleam in her eye when she pinned him and slid down, impaling herself on him and coming three times before he finally got his.

Later, when they fucked in the shower, he started to think maybe, just maybe, he was getting back in the saddle, that he could have just enough to take the edge off and not get swallowed up by feeling. He watched her squeeze the water out of her long dark hair and thought, _hey, I can do this_.

The thought sustained him for the next three minutes, helped along by post-orgasm endorphins and post-shower warmth.

Then he looked in the mirror. Emma was leaning forward, bundling her hair in a towel on top of her head. When she stood up, back to the mirror, John couldn't tear his eyes away from the firm, graceful line of her shoulders, the tendrils escaping the towel at the nape of her neck. He bit down on the inside of his lip and turned away.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I just remembered a duty roster thing I have to fix later. No big deal."

She pecked him on the cheek. "You're cute. I'm going to go see what the engineers have done to the ship. Want to come?"

"No, thanks," he said, recognizing the out for what it was. He wasn't in the mood to face Rodney's knowing look right then anyway.

"All right." She shook her hair out and they kissed again, wet and friendly. Then she was dressed and gone.

John put on sweats and tracked down Ronon for a long, grueling session of hand-to-hand. Bout after bout, John struggled for leverage; he couldn't find it, but Ronon pulled him gently to his feet after every single throw.

 

* * *

Things went kind of dry after Emma. There wasn't a lack of opportunity—the science staff fucked like bunnies, especially when they were stressed out or stumbling along on the verge of some breakthrough. John had been to enough of their parties to know.

He missed it a little. He didn't miss the interdepartmental drama, but he missed the company. These days the most contact he was getting was from Teyla in the gym.

"Perhaps we should reinstitute team movie night?" Teyla said one day. She had him pinned to the mat with a stick across his throat and another bracketing his crotch. Her legs were straddling his body, a brown knee shining at his elbow.

"If you want to," he gasped, "sure. We can do that."

"You have no other place to be now." She stood gracefully and gave him room to get his feet back under him. The sticks felt strange in his hands, heavy and awkward. He tried to imagine them as an extension of himself, like they were on his best days.

Teyla flipped him.

"You are not paying attention." She was straddling him again, only her body was pressed against his this time, and he was getting a fantastic view down her top.

He lifted his eyes to hers. "You've got my attention," he said.

"Really?" she said calmly, and moved down a few inches.

"Really," he answered, and then he felt the heat of her contours teasing his through a few thin layers of cloth.

She smiled. He swallowed. Then he rolled her off and sat up, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees.

"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."

She moved to sit next to him, at an angle so their shoulders touched, and the edge of their backs, but nothing else. "Are we not friends?" she said.

He snorted softly. "That's kind of the problem."

Silence fell, but she didn't move. The sound of her breathing was soothing, though, as it always was. No matter who tied them up or locked them in cages, he could always depend on Teyla's calm. The team wouldn't be a team without her.

After a few minutes she moved, swiveling around to face his side. She scooted closer, enfolding him with arms and legs, and lay her head on his shoulder. It didn't take long for him to relax into it and turn to make it a real embrace. She ended up sitting on his lap, but without the adrenaline of sparring he wasn't half-hard anymore and the sexual tension was mostly gone.

"I can't," he whispered into her hair.

"You could," she said sadly, "but perhaps not without pushing me away afterwards. And I would not accept that."

He didn't answer because he didn't have to; she already knew. And sitting quietly, breathing in the scent of her hair and sweat felt good.

"I believe the team needs a movie night," she said. "I will tell Ronon and Rodney. Your quarters? Around seven?"

He sat back, chuckling. She smiled back at him. "Sounds like a plan."

"We are a good team," Teyla said, and John broke into a sudden wide grin, because even if Rodney was still being weird and even if Ronon was busy being the king of aloof, they really, really were.

 

* * *

A week later, John found himself in a dungeon with Rodney laughing his ass off, and if Elizabeth ever got the real story on this one, she would kill them so dead. If they ever got out of there. If Teyla and Ronon were able to sneak back to the gate to call for reinforcements.

"How is it our fault your planet has a stupid name?" Rodney shouted at the guard through the slot in the door.

"Ni," John peeped helplessly from his straw pallet, because it was Ni and therefore it _had_ to be a dungeon with dusty straw pallets.

Rodney laughed until he wheezed. "God stop, stop, I can't breathe, and if I suffocate and die laughing I promise I will come back," he rasped, "and kill you."

"It's only a flesh wound," John said in as terrible an accent as he could manage.

"I hate you so much," Rodney said, when he had enough air to get the words out.

"Ni!" John chanted. Rodney lay on his side, arms clutching his quivering stomach; he had a big, stupid grin on his face, and John thought how good it was to see Rodney happy. It sent a pang of something through him, and he let out another "Ni!" Rodney groaned and they couldn't stop laughing.

"Monty Python will save the universe," Rodney said a little later, sounding punch-drunk and sleepy.

"Yes, but will they get us out of jail?" John answered.

"You realize Elizabeth's going to have our asses."

John snickered. "Yep."

"What if she takes my coffee rations?" Rodney moaned. "Can we frame it as a cultural exchange gone wrong? Will she buy that? She'd buy that. Don't you think she'd buy that?" Rodney looked at him pleadingly.

John widened his eyes. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

It stopped being funny when Rodney went hypoglycemic, but that was exactly when Ronon burst through the door like an avenging giant, threw Rodney over his shoulder with strange tenderness, tossed John a gun, and said, "Cover us."

Teyla led the way out; John had their six, and with each running, ducking, cover-firing step, he fell a little more in love with his team.

 

* * *

Katie and Shawn broke up, which wasn't unexpected: relationships didn't last on Atlantis. People got killed or maimed or transferred or else caught up in interdepartmental warfare so vicious that it occasionally threatened the basic functioning of the city—at least until the marines stepped in, 'volunteering' certain scientists for civilian defense drills until all the fight had been sweated out of them. It was sneaky, but Elizabeth wasn't above giving the order. Especially since it worked.

John caught Katie eyeing him one day in the mess. He smiled at her and went on his way to the team table. Katie didn't follow, like Nicole sometimes had before things went to hell, but it wasn't really a surprise when Katie showed up at his quarters that night. "Do you want to?" she asked. He smiled and bent to kiss her. She tasted good, familiar, and her body was as soft and lush as ever in his arms.

"Is this okay?" she asked, easing them the few feet to the bed.

"Sure," he said, kissing her again. Then he moved his laptop out of the way and tumbled her down to the mattress. They made out for a while and he remembered how much he liked it. He remembered how well they fit together, how comfortable she was against him. They'd never had much of anything to talk about, other than Rodney, whom they couldn't seem to help talking about, and work, which they had vowed not to talk about. But she'd always felt good.

Their clothes came off as if by magic, because she was the one with the plan and he was the guy along for the ride, so to speak. Her breasts were still phenomenal, bouncing high as she slid up and down upon him, moaning nonsense words and something that could as easily have been his name as Shawn's. He tried not to listen too closely.

Which was maybe why he didn't hear the door chime, or Rodney walk in with something metal and Ancient in one raised hand, saying, "Sheppard, there's this thing called a _radio_—oh, Katie, oh shit." Rodney stood there bug-eyed for a moment, then blinked and turned around. The door swooshed shut behind him.

"Oh hell," Katie said, sinking down again.

John's erection retreated and slipped out of her. "Yeah." He lay an arm across his face. "God damn it."

With a sigh she got up and started getting dressed. "I'll talk to him."

"And say what?" he asked.

She shrugged. "He knows we had a thing before. It's no big deal."

John moved his arm and looked at her. Maybe she knew something he didn't, like some secret science staff code for what was or wasn't a big deal. "Okay, whatever," he said, taking a page from Ronon. It seemed to work, anyway, because Katie only smiled a regretful little smile, brushed a kiss across his lips, and left.

He got up and stood under the shower for a while, jerking off half-heartedly and efficiently scrubbing away the smell of sex. But science code or no, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just seriously fucked something up. Maybe even bad enough to fuck up the team.

 

* * *

It wasn't a surprise that Rodney avoided him the next day. The surprise was the searching look Ronon shot him at the start of their run the morning after that. It was raining, so they did their route through the sublevels instead of the outdoor deck. They nearly never talked, so John wasn't sure what to make of the look, or how the quality of the silence between them had changed.

"See you in the mess," John said when they rounded back to the living quarters. Ronon grunted and disappeared. John hit the shower.

Rodney and Teyla were already at breakfast, as usual. They'd been talking animatedly until John sat down with his tray. Then Rodney shut up, Teyla put on her diplomacy face, and they spent five minutes exhausting the rain, powdered eggs, and Elizabeth's new hairstyle as topics of conversation. Ronon sat down with his tray, edging close enough to Rodney to bump his shoulder. Rodney didn't complain, but after a few seconds announced in a faltering voice that he would see them at the pre-mission briefing after he lectured some of the idiots who worked for him in basic arithmetic and the law of gravity.

As far as catty remarks, it barely registered on the Rodney scathing-meter. John scooped the last of his fake eggs on to his last piece of toast, wiped his mouth, and got to his feet.

"Don't." Teyla and Ronon spoke the word together. Eyeing them both, John dropped back into his seat.

"Give him some time," Teyla said.

"I don't even know what—" he broke off. That wasn't true. It wasn't like he didn't see Rodney walk in. He tried again. "I didn't know he still had a thing for her."

Ronon snorted. Teyla aimed a warning look at Ronon, but said to John, "Let him be for now. You know that Rodney takes refuge in his work. It would be best to allow him to do so."

 

* * *

The mission was another bad one. Another Ancient ruin with spotty power running occasionally operational doors and computer consoles. No ZPM, just the dinky little alternate batteries the Ancients used for small installations that didn't do much.

They didn't get stuck in a dungeon, at least, but—

"Get it back!" Rodney shouted. "This isn't funny, Colonel!"

"Do you see me laughing?" John yelled back. The door that had let them into the room at the top of the tower was gone. Not closed, just gone, vanished, poof. Nothing but a plain gray metal wall with stupid copper inlays and oxidized teal borders. _Let us out!_ John screamed mentally, shoving at the place the door should have been with all his combined mental and physical strength. Nothing happened.

"Motherfucker," he said.

"You aren't serious."

"Scan it again and tell me I'm joking."

Rodney obeyed, reciting a litany of "Damn it, this can't be happening," until he'd covered every wavelength of every sort of energy the wall, floor, and ceiling might have concealed.

John looked around. "At least we have a window." And a view: they had a fantastic view of miles and miles of thick green forest and bright blue sky.

"Which would be great if Teyla or Ronon could go get the jumper, fly up, and get us the hell out of here."

"Crap."

"Yes, crap! Do you know how long it's going to take them to hike back to the gate to call someone to come get us? And that's assuming they've even realized that we're missing!"

John keyed his radio and got nothing but static on all channels.

"See?" Rodney said.

John went to the window and started shouting. It didn't have any glass in it. It was big enough to walk right out of, too, only it was an eighty-foot drop to the pavement below. He kept shouting. About fifteen minutes later, Teyla and Ronon appeared in the courtyard; they looked very small. John waved his arms, pointed behind him, and waved his arms some more. Even with line of sight, his radio was still dead. Rodney shoved him over and shouted uselessly. Teyla and Ronon conferred; then they waved up at them, grabbed some gear from the jumper, and took off at a run. The gate was in the next valley over, several miles away.

"Fantastic," Rodney said bitterly.

"Sorry," John said, because it seemed appropriate. Rodney snorted, found a piece of wall with a view of sky, and sat down on the floor.

The room was bare. Metal walls, metal ceiling, metal floor. John thought the outer facing was crystal, like Atlantis, but he didn't know for sure and the thought of being in the room during a thunderstorm made him nervous.

John sat down, too, a few feet away, with a view of both the window and the portion of wall where the door used to be. With a sigh, Rodney pulled his scanner back out, thumbed some buttons, and pulled up a game of Tetris.

"You aren't going to share, are you?" John said.

"Nope."

"I'll give you a Powerbar."

"Packed extra."

"Please?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you're acting like an eight-year-old! Shut up and let me play."

"_I'm_ acting like an eight-year-old?"

"What, are you deaf now, too?"

"Hey, you're the one who's been perfecting the silent treatment."

Rodney didn't answer.

"Christ, Rodney, will you just talk to me?"

"No," Rodney said, not looking up.

But Rodney was sucking in his cheek like he was biting down on it, and his right knee trembled slightly where it braced his elbow. No matter how long John stared, Rodney wouldn't look up.

After a while John said, "Look, whatever I did, I'm sorry, okay?"

After a while Rodney said, "It doesn't matter."

John waited an even longer while before answering. "Except for how it does, because it's fucking up the team. And that's not okay."

"Sorry," Rodney said. He'd lowered his hands, though he was still gripping the scanner like it held the meaning of life under its plastic screen.

John took a chance and scooted sideways until they were almost shoulder to shoulder. For a moment Rodney looked like he was going to bolt across the room on him, but then he settled again, at least as much as anyone holding himself so tense could.

A couple of minutes passed and John let them. They were good minutes; they were full of Rodney radiating heat and annoyed sighs right next to him. He'd missed Rodney talking and the ease between them, but he hadn't known how much he'd missed his physical nearness, too. It felt good.

John let his head fall back against the wall and the spring-tight tension in Rodney's shoulders slowly uncurled. Several more minutes passed.

"Does it ever get old?" Rodney said, finally breaking the silence.

"What?"

"Being the one they pick—"

John said, "See, I knew this was about Katie."

"Please, you are such a moron." Rodney raised his head long enough to glare at him, then went back to glaring at the screen. "It hasn't been about Katie since Cadman got herself stuck in my brain."

"Oh."

Rodney didn't answer.

John tried again. "Does what get old, exactly?"

Rodney shut his eyes. "Being the one they pick for stress relief. Or a rebound screw."

John whipped his head around. "Wait, wait, what?" John was still stuck at things getting old. This didn't—how the fuck— "And since when do you discuss my sex life with _them_?" he snapped.

"Please, don't act all offended. Everybody in the city wants to get in your pants—it's hardly my fault if your groupies among the science staff come to your team scientist when they want to know their chances."

"Jesus fuck, Rodney, what the hell are you talking about?"

Rodney snorted. "Colonel, you have no idea."

"Yeah," John said darkly, "apparently not, so enlighten me already."

Tilting his head, Rodney shrugged and started talking. "You're pathologically afraid of commitment. To the point of breaking someone's heart, even when you obviously care about her as much as she cares for you. You like women who take charge, but you never look a gift blowjob in the mouth…so to speak. You don't notice women competing over you and you don't notice the men at all—which I don't know if that's military indoctrination or you're just that straight, but the guys can flirt all day and you never even see it."

"That isn't—" possible, he wanted to say.

Rodney chuckled. "The things, ah, certain people—several dozen certain people—would do to you given half a chance."

"Christ." John pressed his palms into his eyes, like that could blot out the images suddenly flooding his mind. "You know what, forget I asked," he said after a minute. He got to his feet and went to the window. The view was unchanged. He crossed to where the door still wasn't and strained himself into a mild headache, begging to no avail.

"Great, give yourself an aneurysm. That'll solve all our problems."

"Shut up, McKay."

"Well, so much for our little heart to heart, hm."

John grunted and sat down where he was. Then he said, "No! No, wait. You give me all this stuff about women—that doesn't explain why the hell you've been giving me the cold shoulder all this time. If it's not Katie—"

"Oh, no-no-no. We're forgetting you asked, remember?" Rodney picked up the scanner and started a new game.

"Damn it, Rodney, just tell me." Rodney didn't answer, so John said it again, louder. And then again, crawling over the smooth floor and saying it in his face over the top of the scanner: "Tell me."

Rodney's eyes were bright, but his voice came out as barely a whisper. "What if I said it would damage the team?"

John sat back on his heels. "We're a good team. We get through everything. Together." He spoke the words, but he was connecting the dots, and the dots were pretty hard to miss once he bothered to look at them. The thing was, sometimes—a lot of times, even—it was easy to mistake people wanting to get in his pants for people who simply enjoyed his company. But he trusted his team.

Rodney didn't say anything else, but his cheeks were a little pinker than they should've been.

John flopped over, sprawling out on the floor in front of the window. It was a perfect day outside. Picnic weather. Propping his head against the ledge, he pulled a granola bar out of his vest and started chewing. A moment later, Rodney was ripping open a package of half-crushed pop-tarts and devouring the stale pastry-pieces like he hadn't eaten in days. John watched him eat and tried to convince himself it was merely comfortable and normal, and not the slightest bit endearing.

Rodney blushed again when he realized John was watching, and John stopped trying. It didn't mean anything—he was just invested in his team. Ronon's thing for hiding knives all over his body was endearing. Teyla's little 'I'm mocking you on the inside' smirk was endearing, especially when it was aimed at somebody else.

After a while John said, "For the record, it's not a pathological fear of commitment. Kind of like it's not really paranoia when they're really out to get you."

Rodney frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"

John sighed and ate his last bit of granola. "You know what I learned from being married? I learned that I fucking hate long-distance relationships."

"I'd forgotten you had been," Rodney said softly.

"For a year about a million years ago—that's not the point. Thing is, when you date on-base there are only two ways it can go: death or change of station. One of us dies or else gets shipped out. That's how it is, end of story."

"That's—"

"It's life, Rodney. It's my life."

"That sucks," Rodney said with surprising vehemence.

John shrugged, as well as he could shrug while lying mostly flat on the floor.

A moment later, Rodney was bitching about just how much the options of 'death or transfer' entirely sucked for John or anyone in his near vicinity, and John closed his eyes, a ghost of a smile on his lips. A couple of minutes after that, Rodney said, "What? You look like the cat that ate the canary. What's the big secret?"

John shook his head. "Nothing."

"Colonel," Rodney whined, mimicking John whining 'Rodney'.

John snorted. "Nothing, I just missed this."

"You missed me bitching about your stupid life?"

John laughed. "Yeah."

Rodney's grin didn't last long enough. Too quickly, he got the look back on his face like he was biting his tongue bloody to hold the words in.

John sat up and turned to face the window. "I'm not going to fuck up the team," he said, and maybe it came out rougher than he meant it to, but he needed Rodney to hear it.

Rodney didn't say anything, and John didn't turn his head until the jumper arrived and Lorne backed the ramp up against the lip of their prison.

 

* * *

Debriefing and missing dinner and skipping his morning run for a breakfast meeting with Elizabeth meant not having to deal with any of it. And he did actually have to rush out of practice with Teyla to get to his meeting with Lorne. And surprise inspections were a good and necessary thing, especially for marines who needed the occasional reminder that even though Atlantis wasn't a desert-cammy war zone, it still wasn't a vacation. Which led to some time on the range, just to, well, drive home the point, and he was totally not overcompensating—much. And if on the way to clean off the gunpowder afterwards, someone in the infirmary radioed for an off-schedule jumper flight to the Athosian settlement on the mainland, it wasn't really out of his way to ferry the nurse and patients over…and it was only polite to stay for dinner.

The next morning Ronon rousted him out of bed by banging on the door until John staggered to his feet and waved him in.

"Stop being stupid," Ronon said. "Get dressed."

"Stop telling me what to do," John snapped back.

Ronon folded his arms over his chest. "Hurry up."

Groaning, John pulled on a fresh black t-shirt, a pair of track pants, socks, shoes, and started stretching.

Ronon bounced in place.

"I am not going to risk tearing something because you're too impatient."

Ronon kept bouncing. John kept stretching. Eventually John felt limber enough to be able to keep up without risk of serious injury, and they took off. Ronon led them outside, and together they watched the sun rise out of the ocean as they ran.

Miles and miles later, Ronon ran them back to John's quarters and, to John's surprise, followed him in. The door slid shut and Ronon said, "Look, Sheppard." Then he stopped and sighed, like maybe putting it into words was too much effort. He looked down, and it took a moment for John to realize Ronon was looking at him, really looking at him, head to toe. In his sweat-soaked clothes, John felt stripped to the skin.

"Is this—" John began, not really sure what he intended to ask.

But Ronon shook his head. "No, see, the only way you're going to fuck up the team is by trying to stand apart. And you already know that, so stop being stupid."

Then he walked out, and John was left yelling at his door, "Oh, like you'd…understand." Then he spent a few minutes banging his head against the wall of his shower.

 

* * *

The next day, after Teyla beat the crap out of him, he asked, "Is it really messing up the team?"

"You and I are well, are we not?"

"Yes!" he said, half in relief and half in exasperation.

"However, Ronon is very protective of Rodney."

John blinked. "Are they—?"

Teyla let out a long breath and sank down next to him. "John. Your rules are not our rules."

John lay back on the mat. He could see Ronon's arms around Rodney; he could see their arms encircling Teyla. "Christ," he said, and tried not to be jealous of what they had, even though he knew all he had to do to share it was say yes.

She said, "Everyone dies—"

John cut her off. "It isn't that. Not with you guys. I mean, against a Wraith Nicole would've been…"

"It is different among warriors."

"Rodney isn't—"

"Rodney isn't the same man he was when we first met," she said, and her voice held an undertone that made John roll onto his side to see the glimmer in her eyes.

"He isn't jealous when people flirt with you."

She patted his shoulder. "He is certain of where he stands with me; there is no need for him to feel insecure."

John sighed and sat up. "Is it such a bad thing that I don't want to lose you? Any of you?"

"You believe it would hurt more to lose us knowing the richness of what we would give you."

John scowled. "Yeah, that's not exactly how I'd phrase it, but…" He shrugged.

"Will you tell me something?" She took his hand. "Does it matter that they are men?"

John laughed. Sure, it mattered. Of course it mattered…just, maybe not as much as it would've before he'd woken billions of space vampires, lost his best lieutenant, been turned into a bug, and nearly died in a hundred different ways no one on Earth could imagine. They were team; they were family and he needed them. But putting out for them— He said, "I've never, with guys. I don't know…"

"I had understood the prince of Surem…" she said gently.

"I didn't really do anything," John said lamely, feeling the heat rise in his face. "I mean, it was all him…and I may have been too drunk to care."

Teyla laughed softly. Then she stood up, rubbing a hand through his sweaty hair, trailing her fingers around his ear and scraping lightly at his neck with her nails. He shivered. "The choice is yours, John, and the team will survive, no matter what you choose." She bent down and he thought for a moment she was going to kiss him. Her breath was gusting over his lips, and he wanted—fuck, he wanted, even though he knew it could never be casual—and his lips parted, hoping. But then her forehead touched his and she stood upright, leaving him to watch her gather her things and smile at him one last time, and walk through the door.

 

* * *

That night he walked into Rodney's quarters, not unlike how Rodney had walked into his, except without their respective handfuls of Ancient doohickey or Katie Brown. Rodney was sitting in bed, watching something on his laptop.

"What do you do with them?" John asked, saying it fast, before he lost his nerve.

"Hi," Rodney said, rolling his eyes. "Won't you come in. Have a seat, please make yourself comfortable."

John pulled out the desk chair and sat down, mostly to be contrary, but also because it put him at eye level with Rodney without having to share the bed with him…yet.

Rodney did a double-take and his mouth fell open. "You're serious!" Rodney hit some keys and moved the computer to the floor. "Oh my god," he said, scrubbing a hand over his head, "you're actually serious."

"Look, you three are doing this and it isn't screwing up the team, at least as far as I can tell." He stared around the room, stared at the blanket and wondered if they'd all fucked on it. "I don't get it."

"We have sex," Rodney said quietly. "It isn't really that complicated."

"But what do you do?"

"We kiss and make out and touch each other," Rodney said, as if explaining to a five-year-old. John glared at him, and Rodney glared back for a moment. Then he relented. "I've never tried to describe it, okay? I don't know what you want me to say."

"I'm just asking what you usually do together, Rodney."

"Usually?" Rodney blushed, and there was a long pause before he said, "This is going to sound—okay, usually, when one of us gets hurt, we make sure the bandages get changed." He scratched at the knee John knew Rodney had scraped last week. "They calm me down when I freak out. Teyla gets busy and forgets to eat. We, well, we all have nightmares, but Ronon's are especially, uh, grisly, so…."

"How long?" John asked.

"Eight or nine months now."

John felt something in his gut twist. "How did it start?"

Rodney didn't answer. John looked at him hard, and Rodney shook his head. Softly he said, "Don't ask me that."

"Was it before Nicole?" John asked.

Rodney let out a breath. "No, not before."

"But it was because of her."

"No," Rodney said, much louder. He scooted forward. "It was because we're a team, John, and while you were off getting what you wanted, the rest of us were getting what we needed."

"So it's _my_ fault? Thanks a lot."

Rodney snorted. "You are such an ass." Their knees were brushing between the bed and the chair, and then Rodney was leaning forward and kissing him, steady and solid and a little relentless. Then Rodney's fingers were in John's hair, and another hand was on his back, hauling him closer like no one ever had before. It was overwhelming, all angles and stubble and points of hardness where his body expected soft curves. But a minute later John was out of the chair and half-straddling Rodney's lap as Rodney's hands held him in place, kept him from falling off the bed.

"Wanted this forever," Rodney murmured, struggling to wriggle them up toward the pillows. John pulled away, eyes narrowing. Rodney scowled back at him. "Never mind. Let's go back to me telling you what an idiot you are. That seems to work better."

John huffed a laugh. He couldn't help it.

Rodney shifted his hips, reached down to adjust himself through his pants, and sighed. John snickered. "Better?"

"Not yet," Rodney said, dragging him forward. It reminded John of the prince of Surem thrusting against his hip until he came, except that this was Rodney, and it was Rodney's cock shoving up against his own from the other side of a lot of chafing fabric. And it was Rodney's hands on his ass, pulling him in tight. And it was Rodney kissing him again, whimpering a little against his mouth and rubbing harder.

John stopped. Somehow an experimental kiss had turned into dry-humping in less than five minutes, and maybe the kiss was shockingly good, and maybe his body didn't really want to stop, but fuck, he hadn't actually come here tonight to get laid.

"Are we fucking?" John said, pulling away. Rodney made a frustrated noise, and John shook his head and sat up. "This isn't what I—I can't do this, Rodney. I can't—"

"Sorry." Rodney let out a long shuddering breath. "I didn't mean—fuck. I just wanted to show you how good it is."

"This isn't…" John tried again. It wasn't the risk—he didn't give a shit about the regs on a personal level; nobody out here was going to enforce them anyway. It was more that this wasn't what he'd thought it would be. It wasn't like Teyla molding her body around him or Ronon throwing him to the mat with his pinky finger, muscles rippling, his trademark smirk growing somehow _more_ as his gaze took in John's body.

"Right, because I'm not a woman," Rodney said. He propped himself up on his elbows, mouth red, nipples showing hard under his shirt, diminishing hard-on still tenting his pants.

With a wry laugh, John shook his head. "No," he said, and kept looking at Rodney's body. He hadn't known how much it would or wouldn't matter. It hadn't really mattered on Surem, and he'd never minded in the past when he caught Ronon or Rodney checking him out. But that wasn't the same as actively going for it.

"Huh."

John looked up.

Rodney was staring at him. "You haven't run away yet," he said, sitting up. He took John's hand. "That leads me to think you aren't flipping out over the gay thing at all."

"Still not gay," John said automatically.

Rodney snorted. John glared and Rodney said, "No, no I get it—labels suck. And also? Women are awesome. Just wait until you get the full Teyla experience. It's unbelievable." Rodney's eyes went a little dreamy and John felt another pang of something in his chest. Then Rodney's eyes were back in sharp focus and John could practically see the gears turning. He started to pull away, but Rodney still had his hand and didn't let go.

"You, um, you asked what we do?" Rodney said, stroking his thumb over John's wrist. "It isn't complicated—I mean, well, it's harder to describe than simply do it, but—we kind of just go with what feels good."

Rodney moved closer, and brought their joined hands to rest on his thigh. "I wish, I really wish you could know what it's like."

"Tell me," John murmured.

"I…." Rodney covered John's hand, sliding their fingers together. "Oh god, I don't know how to say this."

"Just say it."

Rodney exhaled hard and didn't raise his eyes from their hands. "God, okay. Um, what it's like, when I fuck her," he whispered, tracing John's fingers one by one, "and Ronon's touching us both. They're so—you can't imagine."

John's breath hitched. He could. Rodney leaned forward, pressing his forehead against John's shoulder. His voice was low, raspy. "Sometimes she rides me while we're, uh, both sucking Ronon off, and sometimes—sometimes Ronon takes me from behind, while, you know, while I'm inside her." The last words were barely audible, spoken into the cotton of John's t-shirt. Rodney's breath was hot and damp, and John found himself leaning in closer to hear.

"Sometimes she watches me fuck him," Rodney whispered to his neck, "or I watch him eating her out. And, god, okay I know you won't tell anyone this, because, seriously, we'd have to kill you—but a few times, she's taken us both at once—only after missions that really scared the hell out of her, but—actually, more often it goes the other way—I mean, did you know she has a strap-on? That might actually be the only thing I thank Cadman for in my life, but god, John, you have to—Teyla pushing her dick into me with Ronon there behind her, it's—"

"Christ." John's erection was back full strength, and suddenly Rodney had his hand on him, was working him fast and firm through this pants.

"I want—I want you to blow me while you're fucking her and she's kissing Ronon," Rodney said against his ear. John moaned helplessly, tugging Rodney into a desperate kiss. His brain was full of Teyla and Ronon and Rodney tangled together, thrusting and sliding and kissing and rubbing, perfectly fitted to each other. Rodney squeezed him harder. John sucked on his tongue, grinding against Rodney's hand until he had to thumb open his pants or burst.

Gloriously cool air wafted over chafed skin. Then Rodney's head was in his lap, engulfing him with perfect suction and tight, wet heat—and he and Rodney were having sex after all, apparently, but he could worry about that later, because, god—perfect—yes. In his lap, Rodney moaned like he was the one getting blown, and John came so hard he saw stars.

When John came back to himself, Rodney was stretched out with his feet braced against the wall above the pillow, jerking off for all he was worth. "Fuck," John said and lunged up to kiss him. He tasted like come and John shocked himself by being crazily turned on by that, kissing harder and deeper until Rodney's spine arched like a bow and he came.

Rodney collapsed onto his back, come streaking his hand and belly. John propped himself on his elbow, letting himself look his fill while Rodney zonked out.

Dick, balls, come. John waited for the proverbial freak-out, and then wondered if he'd spent the last three days having it prematurely. John ran a finger through the puddle of come next to Rodney's navel and brought it to his lips for an experimental taste.

Rodney shivered. "You have no idea how hot that is," he slurred.

"Yeah?" John traced his lower lip, watching Rodney's face. Then he sucked his fingertip into his mouth. "Hmm, salty," he said, and it was a little gross but not awful, just weird; and the look on Rodney's face— _This could really work_, he thought.

Rodney lifted his come-streaked thumb to his own mouth and licked, holding John's gaze as he tasted and swallowed. John's breath caught.

"I didn't suspect you'd be into the talking thing," Rodney said, and it was John's turn to blush; he hadn't known, either. He hadn't known just how much he wanted to know what he was missing, to be part of it.

Rodney leaned up and kissed him again, sweetly this time, with affection. Then Rodney pulled a neatly folded washcloth out of the drawer of his nightstand and began mopping himself up.

"Do you think they're still up?"

Rodney glanced at his alarm clock and shook his head. "Not this late." His eyebrows went up. "Are you—?"

John shrugged. "I think maybe I need to think about this a little."

Several minutes later, after John had put his clothes on, Rodney said, "Um, so this is probably a stupid question, but you and I, we're okay?"

John was seated in the desk chair again, pulling on his boots. Rodney was still naked. "Yeah, fine," he said. Rodney narrowed his eyes, and John shruggingly amended, "I think so? I didn't exactly expect this to happen."

Rodney looked away, and John saw he was staring at the discarded washcloth; it lay where it had landed, tossed carelessly to the floor. "Regrets?" Rodney whispered.

"No." He moved to sit on the edge of the bed, close in Rodney's space. "Look, we're team, right? This is just…you were already having sex with Ronon and Teyla, this makes all of us."

"So I'm the Lothario in this situation?" Rodney asked in disbelief.

"Sure," John said with a grin.

Rodney snorted. "Look, I know you—"

"You're right," John said, cutting him off, "you do. So don't worry, we'll figure it out." Then he said goodnight and left.

 

* * *

In the morning, John tried to think of a way to break the subject with Ronon, but it followed them through their run unspoken. "What do you say we trade the last two miles for some hand-to-hand?" John suggested. Sure, it broke their pattern, but—

Ronon didn't go for it. "We can spar later," he said, and kept running. John followed, and when Ronon led them back to John's door, it felt like no time had passed at all. John went in and the door stayed open. Ronon stayed on the other side of the threshold, eyeing John as John stared back. A spark of something, interest or possibly mischief, lit Ronon's face, but he only stood on the threshold, taking up the entire doorway.

"Come in for a minute?" John said, worrying someone would walk by and see them. Ronon stepped inside. John rubbed the back of his head. Finally he said, "I don't understand how it wouldn't affect things in the field."

Ronon slowly shook his head. "It does. It makes us better."

"But if…" John trailed off, thinking of how Ronon was with both Rodney and Teyla—the gruff teasing and affection and protectiveness. "You love them, and they could die any minute. I don't…" John bit his tongue, realizing it sounded like he'd forgotten about Sateda. "Sorry."

Ronon shrugged off the apology. "You're lucky, getting to grow up taking everything for granted." Then he tilted his head. "Or maybe really unlucky. Hard to tell."

John made a face. "Thanks."

"Maybe your rules make sense on your world, Sheppard, but I knew two things by the time I could read: the Wraith always come, and almost nobody dies of old age."

John nodded, thinking about how intense Ronon and Teyla both were, how they still had trouble relaxing, even in the relative safety of Atlantis. "It's a different outlook."

"Yeah." Ronon let out a long breath; he looked frustrated. "I'm going to shower. I'll see you later." Then he palmed the door control and left.

 

* * *

The rest of the day was eaten by paperwork. John hung out with Lorne, paging through umpteen different electronic forms. Mission reports, new requisitions, personnel lists for the next rotation. Lorne was good company, but John kept getting distracted. He wondered what it would be like to have sex with Ronon. He tried to envision what he'd done with Rodney only with Ronon in his place, and he couldn't, really. Ronon didn't talk; he would've just pushed John to the bed and shown him. And that…that had a certain appeal.

Maybe this was the freak-out? Except Lorne didn't do anything for him. None of the other guys on base did. He'd loved Holland like a brother, but he hadn't wanted to fuck him; although, he had to admit, if he and Holland had gone through what he and Rodney and Teyla had survived together their first year, and if Holland had initiated, then maybe…except probably not, because Teyla had always been there to act as a bridge between him and Rodney, whether intended or not.

He thought about Teyla. He thought about going to her quarters like he'd gone to Rodney's, only not hesitating with her. What if he let the door slide shut and then kissed the hell out of her? He could imagine it. He could imagine them falling into her bed and fucking half the night away. But then what? Leaving Rodney out in the cold felt wrong, and leaving Ronon out didn't work, either.

"You okay?" Lorne asked.

John blinked. He'd been staring off into space for god knew how long. "Zoned out," he said, rubbing his eyes. Twenty more forms to go.

 

* * *

Dinner was the first time all four of them had been together since John and Rodney had had sex. He'd seen Rodney for about ten minutes at lunch before Rodney's radio chirped and some panicked tech was babbling the latest crisis into his ear. They'd been ten surprisingly not-awkward minutes, despite the unbidden flashback to the taste of Rodney's come and the feel of his mouth. Rodney had been bitching about power requirements and squeezing blood from stones before the radio call, and it had all felt wonderfully, totally normal.

Dinner wasn't. Rodney was fine with him; it was the completely not-surreptitious glances at Ronon and Teyla that made Rodney blush and Ronon snicker. John raised his eyebrows meaningfully, and then kicked Rodney's foot for emphasis.

"Sorry," Rodney said, and focused on that evening's mystery meat and mashed potatoes.

John was at the head of the table. Teyla was on his left, Rodney was on his right, and Ronon was sprawled in the space to Teyla's left. "You could've said something this morning," he said.

John nearly choked. At least the tables closest to theirs were empty. "No, not so much. And we're really not having this conversation here."

"Suit yourself," Ronon said, but he looked like he was barely suppressing a grin.

"This morning?" Rodney asked, looking back and forth between them.

"Wraith and old age," Ronon answered.

"Ohhh." Rodney went somber for a moment, but only a moment. "Um…thanks?" he offered, an intimate smile starting. Ronon grinned.

"I'm sitting right here!" John said.

"That's true," Teyla said, with a winning smile. Then the three of them were all laughing at him fondly, and his feeble attempts at glowering back only made it worse.

 

* * *

They went separate ways after dinner. It was like they knew he needed some space, and he was grateful for it. He went down to the west pier and lay down on the steps of the mostly-enclosed little pool. The city gleamed silver and gold above him. Stars flickered. The moon wasn't up yet, so the sky was a field of black velvet: no galactic crossband of the Milky Way, no steady-lit satellites zooming around the planet, no light pollution, no smog.

Teyla and Ronon knew different sets of stars; the constellations were totally different from Sateda than from Athos than from Lantea. Rodney had told him once the Milky Way wasn't visible at this distance with the naked eye, and then he'd shown John where to find it on the sensors, three and a half million light-years distant.

Water lapped at the steps, endless and soothing as the hum of the city herself. But it started to get cold after a while. There was only so long he could put off telling them _please_ and _don't make me regret this_ and _damn it all to hell_. He had to decide whether the last word would be yes or no.

John took a bracing, sea-drenched breath as he reached the bulkhead door.

He liked it better in Pegasus anyway.

 

* * *

Ronon opened his door and Rodney shoved John forward. "Uh, hi," John said.

"He says yes," Rodney said, beaming, after the door had slid shut behind them.

A low, long laugh rumbled out of Ronon's chest. "That so?" John found himself blushing. Ronon laughed again and stepped forward, wrapping John in an enormous hug.

John had never been held by someone so much bigger than he was, at least in a non-combat situation, and it was weird. Ronon's body rubbed against his at different points than Rodney's, which was odd. So was looking up into Ronon's face and getting an eyeful of scraggly beard.

"Teyla know?" Ronon asked.

"Not yet," Rodney said from a bit closer behind him than John thought. Then he felt Rodney's palms against his back, Rodney's body against his ass. "We're headed to her next."

Ronon smiled and touched John's cheek with a gentle, calloused thumb. John's heart was pounding. Ronon's hand slipped down John's neck, over his chest, and down his side to his waist. John's belly jerked in response and Ronon kissed his temple, cupping his head with his other hand. "Trust your team, Sheppard," Ronon whispered. He stepped back, then, and cuffed Rodney on the shoulder.

"Ow!" Rodney squawked. "What was that for?"

"Not paying attention," Ronon said. "Let's go find Teyla."

It was clear that Teyla had been meditating. John said, "Sorry about interrupting," but she looked from Rodney to Ronon and a smile spread over her face. She took John's hand, which was weird coming from her, and led him over to the far side of her bed. He sat, and Ronon pulled an armload of bedding out of the wooden chest in the corner. Rodney and Teyla spread something like a down comforter or featherbed on the floor, then piled five more layers over it.

"Instant reasonably-sized bed," Rodney said, pleased.

John blinked. He didn't think he was ready for this. "Um, maybe we could just talk?" he said.

Teyla smiled. "Of course. Sit with us." The pile of bedding was soft and cozy; John sat at the edge closest to Teyla's bed, so he could lean back against it, and the others made a rough circle. The room smelled sweet and spicy, like Teyla and the beeswax candles she burned for meditation.

Diagonally across from him, Rodney was thrumming, practically bouncing in place. To John's left, Ronon sprawled, enormous and close and dressed in pajama pants and a sleeveless shirt. Teyla sat at John's right and was holding Rodney's hand, almost visibly willing him to relax.

"Maybe we don't need to talk after all," John said. He could still get up and go back to his room and pretend none of this had happened.

Ronon and Rodney both snorted. Teyla said, "We do, John. We've never been four in this place before, only two and three." John swallowed. He got that. They could be smart about it, and he knew they'd never push him somewhere he didn't want to go.

"Please?" Rodney said, before Teyla squeezed his fingers hard and glared at him.

"What do you want?" Ronon asked, ignoring Rodney's indignant whisper-fit at Teyla.

"Uh…" John didn't know where to begin, or how to begin, or what words to use.

"We take care of each other," Teyla said.

Okay, that was something. "That's what Rodney told me."

"You like being with us," Ronon said.

John nodded. "We're team. In a way that goes beyond the usual definition of the word, I guess."

"See?" Rodney said, looking vindicated.

Ronon smiled his usual enigmatic smile. Then he leaned over and took Rodney's head in his hands, kissing him with warmth and gentle ferocity. Rodney's fingers curled into Ronon's dreads and John swallowed hard, staring, because god. Rodney's lips nipped at Ronon's, changing the angle and deepening the kiss. One of them moaned softly, John couldn't tell who, and John's cock twitched. Next to him, he felt Teyla move closer, but he couldn't take his eyes off Ronon and Rodney. One kiss had become a dozen, and they were still sitting up, mostly. Ronon's pajama pants were showing his growing erection; Rodney's hips were canted at an angle where John couldn't see, but he knew Rodney had to be just as hard.

Next to him, Teyla was watching, too. Her lips were parted slightly, and her breathing had sped up.

"John," she said, and at the sound of her voice, Rodney and Ronon parted, turning to watch.

John met her eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Yes."

She smiled widely, girlishly, and John thought it had been ages since he'd seen her look so unguardedly happy. She lifted her face, and then they were kissing. He didn't really remember what kissing her had felt like before he'd turned blue and crusty, and he was glad. This was the memory he wanted to keep: Teyla's lips warm and wet and welcoming, her arms strong and steady in their embrace. They broke apart and he blinked his eyes open to find Ronon and Rodney much closer to him and Teyla than they'd been a minute ago.

"Can we touch you?" Rodney said, as if what they'd already done together hadn't counted. But hell, maybe it didn't. Teyla kissed him again before he could answer, and then Ronon eased in, bracing a hand on the edge of Teyla's bed. He kissed John like he'd been waiting a year for it, sweet and urgent, and after, Ronon pressed his forehead against John's for just a moment, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. Then he kissed him again.

John pulled him closer, but Ronon jerked away with a surprised curse, breathing, "Fuck, McKay, you could warn me." Rodney was wrapped around Ronon's back, and his hand was stroking Ronon's cock through a single layer of gray-striped cotton.

"Naked," Rodney said, mouthing Ronon's neck.

Ronon's hands were still on John. "You okay with that?"

John stared at Ronon's cock, curving hard to the left in its tightly confined space. Rodney was squeezing the base, teasing his balls with a couple of fingertips. "Fuck, yeah," John said.

Next to him, Teyla chuckled and said, "Good."

 

* * *

John was on his knees, upright, with Ronon pressed tight against his back. Ronon's calves were bracketing John's and Ronon's cock was pressed in a hard line along John's spine. Both Ronon's arms were crossed over John's torso, holding him tight as they kissed. He tasted like Teyla, they both did, and John held the back of Ronon's head with one hand, kissing and kissing. His other hand held Ronon's lower forearm—except when he let go to get a grip on his leaking cock.

Teyla batted his hand away and tasted him again. Rodney kissed her, and then reached between John's legs, worked Ronon's cock down, and brought the head of it to rest just under John's balls. Ronon spread his knees a little and thrust forward with a long groan.

"Oh yeah," Rodney said, watching Ronon's cock appear. John stared down. He could feel the shaft skimming his ass and all the restrained power Ronon was putting into his thrusts. Fuck. Then Rodney was sucking Ronon's cockhead into his mouth, pressing his lips right against John's balls.

"Like that," Teyla said, and took John's cock into her mouth. Rodney hummed an acknowledgment and Ronon grunted.

"Are they always this mean?" John panted, and then Ronon's mouth was back on his, tongue thrusting with the same rhythm his hips were giving Rodney's mouth and John's balls.

"Fuck," John whimpered into Ronon's mouth as Rodney's tongue moved to his balls and Teyla sucked harder on his cock. Ronon kissed him harder, squeezed him tighter, and kept thrusting.

John came, vision spangled white, with a long rough whimper he didn't recognize as his own; and Teyla kissed them each, long and slow, letting them lick John's come from her mouth as they lowered him down to the makeshift bed. "Holy crap," John mumbled.

"You are so fucking hot, I knew this would work," Rodney said, kissing the taste of John's come back into him. John found Rodney's shoulders and pulled him closer, held him tighter. "Fuck, oh fuck," Rodney said into his neck a minute later. Teyla was running her hands back and forth over Rodney's ass, and Ronon was working his hand where John couldn't see. A plastic tube lay on the sheet next to Rodney's right knee.

"Holy crap, is he inside you?" John said, realizing Ronon had to be.

"Oh god, yes." Rodney sounded wrecked, and John had to kiss him again before he shoved Rodney up by the shoulders, so that Rodney was upright, knees spread wide, like John had been before.

"Don't stop," John said. Teyla wrapped an arm around Rodney's chest and kept him from falling forward, as John curled down to watch Ronon's fingers sliding and twisting, opening Rodney up. She kissed Rodney once, and then nibbled her way down to his ear and neck and collarbone.

"Are you going to fuck him?" John asked, ignoring Rodney's strained, incoherent babble.

Ronon shook his head. "Saving it for Teyla."

"Mm." John raised up and took Rodney's cock in hand, jerking it a couple of times and drawing fresh, wild-eyed streams of noise from Rodney. Ronon drove deep and John bent his head to Rodney's cock. Tentatively he kissed the leaking head, tasting precome and Rodney, and let it slide a little way into his mouth as he stroked.

Above him, Teyla was thumbing one of Rodney's nipples and scraping her teeth over his neck. John couldn't see Ronon except for the hand braced on Rodney's hip, but he could feel each thrust through Rodney's shuddering, pleasure-wracked body.

"Oh god, please," Rodney keened, and Ronon did something with his hand, something that tore a ragged howl from Rodney's chest. John felt the twitch in the vein as Rodney thrust into his mouth and started to swallow even before he had to.

Rodney fell forward into John when Teyla let him go. Guiding him onto his back, John kissed Rodney twice, three times, and more, with a fervor that took him a little off-guard. He _needed_ this. Rodney was soft, pliant, and pressing all his strength into nuzzling sleepy kisses against John's skin, and it was right.

John jerked his head up as Teyla cried out. She was on her back, legs wrapped high around Ronon's chest, and their mouths were locked together in a hungry, needful kiss. She'd come at least once before, when they'd all three taken turns licking her, but she was nearly there again, moaning into Ronon's mouth as her hips bucked under his. Ronon had to be at least as far gone as Teyla, after doing to them without getting done, and John stared, open-mouthed. "So fucking beautiful," he said, not even realizing he'd spoken until Teyla reached for his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back and another round of shivers ran through her.

Ronon bent to kiss her again. Then he stretched sideways, and John met him halfway.

Rodney whimpered from his lethargic sprawl and half-wrapped himself around John's leg. John petted Rodney on the head, but then turned his attention back to Teyla, kissing her neck, her nipples, her belly, Ronon's belly, Ronon's nipples, Ronon's neck, Ronon, and back down. They came with John's mouth on Teyla's left breast, a slick bundle of shouting and sweat. Then, suddenly, Ronon rolled back on his heels with Teyla still in his arms, straddling his lap as he shook and shook. For a moment, John wasn't sure, but a glance and nod from Rodney made it okay. He slid in behind Teyla, framing Ronon's knees with his own; Rodney scooted in behind Ronon, and they all four together held on.

 

* * *

"Oh god, we're going to die. We're going to drown in a giant mud puddle."

"We are not going to drown."

"Hello, flood waters!" Rodney flailed a hand, then clutched the corroded metal rung of the water tower access ladder he was clinging to. John was about five feet to his left, braced at the riveted crossbars of two support struts. It was rickety, but there wasn't any high ground to be seen and John didn't know what might be swimming around in the water.

They'd hardly been rained on at all, but the reason they were there—the flat stone beeping out a mysterious, Rodney-enticing energy reading—was smack in the middle of a flood plain bordered on three sides by the tributaries of a monster river to the south. Teyla and Ronon had run for the village. Falling behind and unable to fight the cold current, John had thrown Rodney at the tower and played alligator, chasing him up the ladder until they were high enough to wait for rescue.

"Cavalry'll be here in a minute," John said. Water swirled below. It was brown with flecks of beige foam. Insect-covered logs and leafy tree limbs floated by, and there were occasional dark objects that might have been animals or just debris. John didn't want to find out.

"You can't know that! We don't even know if they made it to the gate!" Rodney stopped, horror dawning. "God, you don't think they drowned, do you? Or got eaten by something horrible?"

"Rodney," John said in his chill-the-fuck-out-already voice, and Rodney went quiet. John shifted, trying to find a less uncomfortable seat on the two metal beams crisscrossing his ass. "We're going to be fine," he said, drawing his feet up on one as he lay back on the other.

Rodney stared across the empty space to his crotch, and he was distracted long enough that John thought he'd forgotten to answer. Then Rodney shook himself and said, "Fine? Fine? We're clinging to a rusted-out heap of tin, Colonel! A little concern for our lives would not be amiss here!"

"I'm concerned," John protested, but he knew that as soon as Ronon and Teyla made it through the gate it wouldn't take more than ten minutes to rustle a jumper crew. And as long as they stayed where they were and any critters stayed down there, everything would be fine. "Hey," John said, "tell me what Zelenka's working on."

"Why do you care what Zelenka's working on."

"I don't. This is my clever way of distracting you from our immediate situation."

"Please." Rodney gestured wildly. "Miles of water all around us. You are not distracting me from this!"

"I'm serious. Tell me. What are those crazy engineers up to?"

"This is the best distraction you can think of?"

"Well, no, but I don't want to risk jarring this tower too much."

Rodney closed his eyes and groaned in misery. "Thank you for that. Do I need to remind you there are _things_ in the water?"

"Zelenka," John said, edging into command voice.

"Fine!" Rodney said, and started ranting spitefully about electrical engineers, kindergartners, incompatible hardware, and Ancient power sources.

About fifteen minutes later, Ronon and Teyla came into view paddling a long canoe. John started laughing. Ronon grinned.

"Oh god, I hate boats," Rodney said. "Is there something wrong with the stargate? Why didn't you just call Atlantis and make Lorne bring a jumper?"

"The water at the gate is too high to dial out," Teyla said. "The villagers offered us this."

"I really hate boats," Rodney said weakly. "Not ships, just little dinky ones like this."

"Aw, Rodney," John said, "don't make Ronon climb up and get you. Just climb down the ladder and don't rock the boat too much when you sit down."

"You didn't see any alligators on the way, did you?" Rodney asked Teyla. "No giant man-eating wildlife?"

Ronon moored the canoe to the strut nearest the ladder. "Here, give me your pack," Ronon said, reaching up to pat Rodney's ankle. Rodney unclipped it from his vest and passed it down for Teyla to stow. "Okay," Ronon said calmly, "now climb down, step into the boat, and sit down."

"Don't let it flip."

"We won't," Teyla said.

"Hold it steady."

"Rodney!" John said.

"Come on," Ronon said, "I've got you."

"Later…" Rodney said, finally moving down a rung, "later, you really will."

Ronon snorted and John laughed. "Better get in the boat, then," Ronon said.

A few minutes later they were on their way back to the village, listening to Rodney get his traumatic boyhood camp experiences out of his system, with particular emphasis on horrible canoe trips across freezing cold, if reptile-free, Canadian lakes.

It might be a while before the water receded enough to use the gate, John thought. Maybe they could get a room at the inn—a room with a hot bath, if they were lucky, and room service, and a great big bed.


End file.
